Fallout: Vault Archives PnP Revised Edition

Bit to number-crunchy for my taste, but all the manuals look cool. I especially like the loot tables.

I've considered in the past making a streamlined alternative version but the setup when I was DMing ran smoothly enough that I felt I didn't need it at all. In reading it I can 1000% see how it comes off like that though
 
I love how one PC being the dedicated "face" of the party is something that happens organically in pretty much every campaign I've run.
 
EDIT: Majorly overhauled mutation because I wasn't happy with it. When I finish the chapter on vehicular combat and give that a few revisions (thinking of going more abstracted/narrative style with it by greatly simplifying the 2.0 rules and marrying it with a combo of PBtA's dice system and Feng Shui's Chase rules) , I'm going to reupload a new edition of the main document. Also thinking of updating the Overseer's Guide with a section on how to run large battles in an interesting way.

One day I will end up actually using this again for a campaign. Hopefully my tinkering will be done by then. Still, gets closer every day.
 

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What kinds of adventures has your party been on @Atomic Postman

Campaign was set in 2273 Utah, Idaho, Nevada with slivers of Arizona and Colorado thrown in. ("Theme" was The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra but each player had unique themes).

Was largely a sandbox campaign driven by player and villain story arcs rather than any main adventure. More "western adventure of the week". Started out with them travelling together via Happy Trails Caravan to New Canaan on the I-80, but being diverted north into Idaho to take a longer way around to avoid the resurgent 80's Tribe (Who had since reclaimed the route following the collapse of the Desert Rangers)

Main villains were former NCR Major Calvera and "former" Desert Ranger Anton Holloway, known as the "Hollow Ranger" for wearing the armor of the Desert Rangers but disgracing their code. Major Calvera (theme - L'Arena by Ennio Morricone) was inspired by the likes of Colonel Kurtz and Dutch Van Der Linde, formerly the leader of a large unit sent by NCR to wipe out tribals along the Big Sur, he now leads his men (and their families) in this bohemian vagrant outlaw lifestyle that rejects NCR and civilization as a whole. After stealing a bunch of NCR gold from Redding, him and his band have finally skipped town and headed out of California into the great unknown. His personality and (my) performance in RP was inspired heavily by Homelander from The Boys TV show.

Anton Holloway was a mix of Anton Chigurh and the Mountain from Game of Thrones. An inscrutable sociopath with what's likely a tumour on his head causing him to behave savagely. The true cause of Flynn's wife's death wasn't a deathclaw, it was Holloway. Flynn assumed otherwise because the raw mutiliation would only come from an animal. Calvera had hired Holloway for the Redding gold job, and was given a share of the gold. However, one of Calvera's men broke rank and stole Holloway's share of the gold in the confusion, and split off himself with a few others to flee into Idaho without Calvera.

This breakaway gang were encountered by the party in their first session harassing a small town, and the party could not help but take the gold despite situational warnings that this gang of petty thugs were deeply, deeply regretting taking it. This led to the party being persistently tracked and stalked by Holloway throughout the entire campaign, periodically turning up as a high level enemy to set traps, sabotage their efforts and scare the living jesus out of them with brutal ambushes (His arrival was marked by "The Man With a Harmonica" by Ennio Morricone). Fizzy managed to land a critical and melt Holloway's left eye during a fleeing attack, which only worsened things further.

I described some of the locations they visited in a different thread here: https://www.nma-fallout.com/threads/share-your-head-cannons-for-fallout.219324/#post-4382031

Some of their adventures included:

Running into the middle of a democratic election in Idaho's main hub of slave trade, Bridgetown, and deciding not to side with any of the various candidates but instead the millitant abolitionists terrorizing the town, blowing up "The Bridge" of Bridgetown, killing several dozen civilians in the process and effectively cutting off the majority of Idaho from south of the Snake River and cutting the throat of the region's slave trade, but also damning it to economic and resource despair. Various moral debates between the party ensued.

Gaining the favour of New Canaan by helping the town guard defeat a gang of cannibalistic raiders, with Deadspeaker peforming a naked 1 v 1 boxing match with the raider's leader at the town gates. They helped strengthen a fledgling speakeasy under the town's abandoned rail station (Alcohol is banned in New Canaan), one party member converted to Mormonism. They later were sent on a task to find a replacement water chip to repair New Canaan's desalination/water purfiication plant which is on the fritz. Initially searching the Giant Mantis infested ruins of Vault 70 in Salt Lake City to no success, but nearly all dying in the process

Discovering a Vault inspired by the society in the movie Brazil, where everything is layered in comical levels of bureaucracy, red tape and the entire population is effectively doing meaningless paperwork (experiment intended to monitor how buisnesses naturally become more efficient starting from an absurd level of unneccessary bureaucracy and departments) for their entire lives. The Vault was about to explode due to a faulty geothermal plant which nobody had any idea was going wrong nor any idea how to authorize a fix, thankfully saved by the party after screaming frustration with papers and departments.

Playing bounty hunters and eventually musical chairs with various desert warlords (Referred to as "The Mandalorian period")

Recreating Seven Samurai with a village of tribals

Experiencing a mistaken "Hail Hydra" moment with a Legion Frumentarii

Discovering a cult of alien-worshipping hippies living around a pre-war space center and doing a LOT of peyote with them, eventually imprisoning their rapey cult leader inside of a sealed space colony prototype

Eventually this iteration of the party were mostly slain by Anton Holloway in a final confrontation, though Flynn finally managed to put a bullet in the bastard's head as well (his dying action). We were going to start again fresh from a higher level with a new story, but COVID happened.
 
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Here's the vehicle module. I'll reupload the main file with Mutation and Vehicles wrapped in as well as some minor edits throughout soon-ish. Some of the mechanics (Chase mainly) are adapted/frankenstein's monster'd from Atomic Highway.

EDIT: Oh and Pilot will replace the superfluous Gambling in the main file.
 

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Considering finding a better way to handle damage resistance/armor so as to reduce the need for calculation. Probably won't result in anything though.
 
What's changed this version?

Decided to stick with a DR system and realigned Skills, there's 20 total but there's been a lot of rejigging. New skills, merging, et cetera, also effects weapons with the merging of Skills.

Burst Fire has been reworked/improved vastly (I feel anyway) to make it more unique to each type of burst weapon.

Perks every two levels instead of three.

New energy weapon category "Electrical"

Lots of new Unarmed and Melee moves during combat to give flexibility inspired by DnD's battlemaster, including a pocket sand attack. There's also now a potential path for non-strength based Melee Fighters (AGL is used instead of Strength to derive Melee Damage if you take an early perk). Certain melee weapons have "Special moves" that are unique to them, such as the Thermic Lance (new weapon) allowing you to melt through the DT on Power Armor or giving devastating damage to the Super Sledge if you're bringing the hammer down on a knocked down opponent.

Crafting has been simplified and made more accessible, ammo crafting in particular is a lot simpler.

Superfluous weapons and armor have been cut, and existing ones have been rijigged in order to make things simpler and also more distinct.
 
I like what you’ve done with skills, you seem to have struck a good balance between having broad generalized skills and more specific skills. However, I personally think that Connect is kind of unnecessary. I feel like anything that Connect does can be covered by your Charisma stat, along with Persuasion and maybe even Deception.

Pocket sand attack is a cool idea. Sh-sh-sha!
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I like what you’ve done with skills, you seem to have struck a good balance between having broad generalized skills and more specific skills. However, I personally think that Connect is kind of unnecessary. I feel like anything that Connect does can be covered by your Charisma stat, along with Persuasion and maybe even Deception.

Pocket sand attack is a cool idea. Sh-sh-sha!
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Charisma is unofficially the "Leadership" stat as I'll rule it. As for Connect, I include it because it was a Skill in Stars Without Number and having played in a campaign it was actually a very cool skill that ended up having unique utility - it might not play out that way in my next FO campaign but I figure it's worth the gamble. I also feel it covers a particular niche in character archetypes that wasn't quite filled - I actually think a "Diplomat Boy" type character wouldn't neccessarily tag it. It's less for the "Albert Coles" of the Fallout world, as it were.

The character I played in the Stars campaign had that skill tagged and he wasn't really a diplomatic speech giver or silver-tongued, but he was a sort of gruff mercenary that knew how to find the right people or dig up the seedy underbelly of a place, and he had a long history as a mercenary which meant he had a lot of Lando type figures that he dug up through his travels using Connect.
 
Huge update on the way, the PnP is now calculator free. I fixed the problems I had with Damage Threshold, among many other changes.

My final hurdle is burst fire rules. Once I roll that up this is shaping up to be a eureka moment for the PnP, should play a lot lot smoother now.
 
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Uploaded a huge update and I've renamed the PnP to "Vault Archives" because I think it's changed a lot, and also calling it Vault Archives v.1 is easier to keep track of in my folder.

Core parts of this update:
  • PnP is now entirely calculator free. DR has been replaced by a simple DT system that I am finally very happy with. Power Armor still has "damage resistance" but it's an ability that broadly halves incoming damage (with some exceptions) on top of existing DT. New Barter formula and emphasis on the RP nature of bartering without cap currency
  • Limb Crippling/Targeted shots overhauled/simplified into a system that uses exploding dice to make them unpredictable, fun, easy to track and a way of getting around DT if you're underpowered (Can't pierce the body armor? Go for the head)
  • Connect removed as a Skill and instead its properties with picking up connections/rumours transformed into Perk abilities, and socializing put into the area of Charisma.
  • Explosives removed, Big Guns and Throwing restored, "Demolition Experts" are people who pick a couple different perks that can specialize them as explosives guys. Big Guns given early-game weapons to ensure they're a viably taggable skill from the start, such as Industrial Rivet Guns or Super-Blowtorches.
  • Radiation tweaked to make it simpler and much more of a threat for Human players than in the games
  • Burst Fire/Suppression Fire and automatics overhauled to their most balanced, satisfying and simple incarnation yet. Really easy to do, balanced and gives each form of automatic a niche
  • Perks every two levels instead of three because Perks are a very nice way of diversifying characters
  • Action Boy made into a Level 2 perk with 3 ranks to allow Agility to not be a necessary pumped up stat from the get go
  • A bunch of minor edits and changes that have otherwise tightened up the document that I can't think of right now
Not that any of this matters because I'm still probably a good half year out of getting a game going, but still, feels good to have buried the hatchet on a lot of mechanics irks I was having.

In the future I'm looking to introduce new mechanics rather than revise old ones for "Vault Archives V2". Some ideas I have floating around are incorporating the proposed 'Fatigue' system from Van Buren to make Unarmed fighters a true standout, but to do so without it being terrible bookeeping. Additionally, "Stronghold" rules on founding and building up a settlement. Assigning work, recruiting people, establishing trade routes/deals etc in order to imitate the planned "Fort Abandon" gameplay mechanic from Van Buren. But these are just floating ideas. Fatigue likely isn't going to work out great and building up a town might not need specific mechanics.
 
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What exactly was the “Fatigue” mechanic in Van Buren? I remember there being mention of Unarmed “combo” attacks, but I’m unfamiliar with the Fatigue system.
 
What exactly was the “Fatigue” mechanic in Van Buren? I remember there being mention of Unarmed “combo” attacks, but I’m unfamiliar with the Fatigue system.


Effectively there'd be another stat alongside HP determined by Endurance - the number would get higher with more strenuous activities. For example, you could chain together numerous Unarmed moves for less AP and allowing to hit multiple targets in one move like a HtH grenade - but it would incur fatigue. Similarly certain non-lethal weapons would specifically raise fatigue - allowing for pacifist playthroughs.

Your Fatigue would be lowered each turn by your Healing Rate, and could be drastically raised by things like coming down off of Chems.

If your Fatigue surpassed your HP, you'd pass out and wouldn't re-awaken until your fatigue was lowered lower than your HP again.

Sawyer's suggestion for having thirty something potential Unarmed combos and Unarmed defined by versatility and the fatigue system whereas Melee would be more straightforward and deal more damage but wouldn't have the options.

On paper sounds very neat but in practice it sounds like a bit of additional bookeeping and the idea of unarmed fighters suddenly passing out then getting back up again seems really odd. Not sure if it'd be worth converting to PnP. The high amount of combos sound cool but superfluous perhaps for the same reason. I added in a combo move as Unarmed exclusive to nod to the idea.

However if I can find a satisfying and simple way to include it, I will.
 
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Fuck it, I decided after making that post I'd take a look further into Fatigue and Unarmed and now I completely revised Unarmed combat and introduced the "Fatigue" system suggested by Saywer, and it has ended up being a very elegant stamina system (IMO) that has really made Unarmed and Melee Weapons distinctly different types of fighting. Unarmed does less raw damage than Melee Weapons now and has to worry about fatigue (whilst the MW don't), but the versatility, unique moves and combo-systems of Unarmed make it have unique utility. Fatigue also gives Healing Rate (now called Recovery Rate) an actually good purpose too.

Really happy with how this has ended up, and reuploaded the main file. So I snuck that one into version 1.

Fatigue.png


Combos1.png


combos2.png
 
Wasn't happy with that last bit either, so revised it once (and for a final) time. Also brings the document to a nice clean 150 pages, so that's cool.

Fatigue.png

UnarmedAttacks.png

UnarmedMoves.png
 
Very good format, I honestly cant wait to play this with some friends thanks for making this a possibility.
 
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